TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE MINISTRY AT WAR.
Fr 1FIE rumour of the Dake of Somerset's resignation, which
we are half-inclined to suspect was put out as a feeler, has not been well received by the public. The Duke is an unknown quantity in politics, his character, his views, and even his face being probably less known to the country than those of any politician of equal rank. All that is patent to the public outside a very small circle is that he has rebuilt the navy, that his administration is less attacked by admirals than that of any recent First Lord, and that when he can be induced to make a speech, which is absurdly seldom, he leaves on his readers, if not on his audience, an impression that he understands his business most completely. This is not much to build on, but the Duke, owing principally to an idea that he cannot be influenced by pressure, has a certain genuine popularity, and his removal from the Admiralty would be a loss of popular as well as of administrative strength. He would, moreover, be succeeded by Sir Charles Wood, and though the public in-doors rather believes in the member for Ripon, the public out of doors will not be convinced of his capacity. He cannot somehow conciliate England any more than Halifax, and his subsidence into the House of Lords would be accepted with a feeling of grateful acknow- ledgment. It is felt, too, that the Cabinet is of all things weak in administrative strength, and to shelve its most suc- cessful administrator in an office without duties is very like a waste of power. If he must be transferred at all, and we can quite understand the expediency of -vacating the Indian Secretaryship as the best appointment for a new man, why should not his new charge be, as the Times has already sug- gested, the War Office t We have no sympathy whatever with most of the attacks upon Earl De Grey, whose successes make him many more enemies than his failures, but a Cabinet Minister may be most efficient and yet placed in the de- partment least fitted for the exercise of his powers. The War Office is like no other in the State. In no other is the power of the responsible Minister shared by an irresponsible agent of the Crown, and in no other is ultimate power so completely divorced from immediate authority. If Earl De Grey informs the Commander-in-Ohief that in the event of a certain ap- pointment being made he shall decline to defend it, the appointment will not be made, yet technically the appoint- ment is no business of Earl De Grey's. He can only be rated for permitting it, a state of affairs which, but for the extreme reluctance of statesmen to place an army under the control of a popular body, and so make commands, as it were, political prizes, would not be permitted to endure. Indeed it is very doubtful if it can be made to endure at all, but if it can it is indispensable that the Secretary at War should act as conscience to the Commander-in-Chief. He must, if he is not to administer the army himself, check the soldier who does, must be himself a concrete public opinion, and apply just that degree and kind 'of pressure which, were the army a Parliamentary department, Parliament would apply. The country is not going to pay fourteen millions a year for an army and not rule that army, and the indirectness of the mode of ruling adopted is only a conces- sion, made partly to opinion and partly to immovable pre- judices on the part of the reigning House. The difficulty of applying such an indirect pressure so as to be irresistible, yet not be transmuted into direct command, is excessive, and when the Commander-in-Chief is a Prince of the Blood, and hasty-tempered to boot, is almost insuperable. The Duke of Cambridge is not, we believe, accounted in the army a bad Commander-in-Chief. He governs the army with a sincere wish to make it as efficient as its constitution will permit—a task which as time rolls on, and that constitution gets more and more out of relation to modern society, becomes one of daily increasing weight. He very seldom allows anybody to job but himself, and it is the jobbery of underlings which does such frightful mischief ; he has a real sympathy with the soldier, and he does not care a straw for aris- tocratic pressure. Parliamentary pressure is formidable, and newspaper pressure dreadful, but who is anybody in England that he should simply by social power press on the House of Brunswick? The Commander-in-Chief nevertheless does not quite see that if the army is to remain a peculium of the Crown, or, as he would probably put it, of his family, he must obey Parliamentary opinion as expressed by its represen- tative. To press this point is the first duty of the Minister at
War, and it is not clear to the country that Earl De Grey suffi- ciently performs it.
In this affair of Colonel Bentinck, for example, whatever the exact truth, the War Office has obviously not pressed hard. enough. According to the popular account, the Duke of Cam- bridge has given to an officer placed on half-pay for tyranny the Inspector-Generalship in Dublin, one of the best appointments in
the service, and sought by at least 200 officers of equal rank, and better antecedents. Clearly, if this account is correct, the Secre- tary at War ought not to have permitted the appointment. Ap- pointments of the kind are not his business, but defending them is, and he had only to declare that he could not con- scientiously defend this one to prevent it at once. The Duke will not willingly call attention to an anomalous prerogative by causing a vacancy in the Cabinet. But there is another account, and a different one, which we believe to be very much more true, and which supplies a much more adequate motive for Colonel Bentinck's appointment. The suggestion.
that he is favoured because he may be Duke of Portland waa a feeble one, for if Princes have any use in great appoint- ments beyond their natural capacity, it is that they do not care a straw about the social position of the great English nobles, rather, if the truth were told, dislike them for coming so very near the throne. The new statement is that the Horse Guards was itself responsible for the worst part of the Robertson affair. We have no wish to revive buried scandals, but it is certain in any view of the case that Colonel Bentinck wished to remove Captain Robertson from
the army. He accordingly, it is said, applied for his removal, but was told, in accordance with certain very old and, as we
think, very bad traditions of the army, that it was a case not for removal, but for extreme regimental pressure. That pres- sure was applied, and when the fact came out and the country- grew wroth, Colonel Bentinck, with that cold forbearance which has been the mark of every statesman of the family, stood silent under the storm, refusing to defend himself at the expense of his superiors. He is now therefore to be Inspector-General, and if this statement is correct is not un- fitted for his post by the original transaction. But if it is true, why does the Minister at War permit such a hole-and-corner system of administration to continue, why not compel the Horse Guards to stand by its own instructions, which, injudicious or even wrong in themselves, were at least in harmony with the traditions of the army? Officers have been expelled, are expelled, and will till we get a reform be expelled every month by regi- mental pressure, applied for reasons which are never assigned in the charges submitted to a court of inquiry. There is weakness in allowing so much, in failing to use that pressure which would keep the machine straight, and which,—if the present bizarre constitution of the services is to continue, if the Navy is to obey Parliament, and the Ordnance to obey Parliament plus an independnet Board, and the Army to obey Parliament plus the Crown's agent plus a semi-independent. Staff,—must be steadily applied. The public belief is that the Duke of Somerset would apply it steadily, that he is a match for the Duke of Cambridgein influence, and more than his match in steadiness of will. At the admiralty, for the first time for many years, all visible authority except that of the First Lord has disappeared, and even admirals with grievances feel that their eloquence is just a little wasted. The First Lord may go wrong or go right, but at any rate he' will go the way he has decided to go, and somehow opposition melts away. It needs to be melted also in the War Office, where the country demands a man to whom a Commander-in-Chief is simply an influential colleague, who will see that the hierarchy of office in departments like the Ordnance really means something, and who will consider the dismissal of clerks addicted to chicken hazard at untimely hours a matter of detail, no more requiring defence or ex- planation than the dismissal of so many dockyard hands. We
should be sorry to see Earl de Grey quit the Cabinet, and even the War Office, where he has been in all things useful, and in one thing, the organization of the Volunteers, incomparable, but if the Duke of Somerset is to move, it should be to the War Office rather than the Presidency in Council.
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